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Who Went to School or The Spelling Bee
The Whale Who Wanted To See
More Than Sea World
a Fable by John Pearson Gertrude, a
whale who was a libra, had been balancing trainers on her nose for years. One day she thought,
"Why am I doing this? I could be in the ocean hearing humpback whale songs. I could be
frolicking in Florida and swimming with dolphins and the people who swim with dolphins. I could
be swimming with sea turtles in Hawaii." She wondered "How can I escape?" Then she
suddenly realized that she could volunteer for the whale research center at the San Francisco
Aquarium. In addition to being the subject of research she would have to spend some time
circling around their big fish tank and peering at all the people. But that was a small sacrifice
to make compared the job at Sea World. It would be a step in the right
direction toward what she really wanted to do which was to move to Baja and have babies at
Scammons Lagoon. So she spent about a year in the San Francisco Aquarium where the staff
researched her and she researched them. She found that they had strange mating habits (out of
water) and that they sat in something called offices most of the time. The staff liked her
except when she would sometimes spout off. One day she asked her boss
if she could take a leave of absence. She was surprised when he said yes. She found out later
they were going to replace the whales with sharks anyway because Jaws had just come
out, and they wanted to be contemporary. She decided the only way to
get to Baja was to try to get into a film being made there. She heard accidentally that
Moby Dick was being shot off the coast of Baja. She applied but found that they were
using a mechanical whale instead of a real one, which didn't look anymore like a whale than
your grandmother. Also it was pretty creaky. She had heard that Gregory Peck was also pretty
creaky. Anyway she heard about another movie being made called Belugas
in Baja. Even though she wasn't a Beluga she thought she might get a swim on part. There
weren't any small parts for such a big whale. So she headed out to see what she could see in
the sea and met and fell head over flippers in love with a humpback whale. She didn't get to
Scammons Lagoon, she didn't have babies, but neither did she have to balance trainers or swim
endlessly in tanks, or swim with those people who loved to swim with dolphins. It seemed
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